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Men, this morning I'm going to preach on the subject of patience, or as the Bible puts it in this chapter over and over again, waiting upon the Lord. The Bible says in verse number three, trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass and he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. So in the preceding verses there, verses three, four, five, six, he's making all these promises about all the good things that he's going to do for those who trust in the Lord. But then he says in verse seven, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. See the promises of God are not always fulfilled immediately. It's not like we go out and do something good or start cleaning up our life or living for God and going to church and then just all of a sudden everything starts going well for us. All of a sudden the blessings just start raining down. We have to have patience. A lot of people in the Bible had to wait a long time to receive the promises that God made for them. And the Bible is telling us to rest in the Lord in verse seven and wait patiently for him. Now this is a term that's used all throughout the Bible. Wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord. Now a lot of people will abuse this phrase and they'll take it to mean sit on your backside and don't do anything and just kind of wait for God to do something. This is the churches that are praying for revival. Instead of experiencing revival, instead of going out and winning people to Christ and working hard and preaching hard and doing great works, they are very dead and lackadaisical but they're praying for revival. We don't know when it's going to come and we just hope that God's going to send revival. Meanwhile other people are making revival happen by actually obeying what God already told us to do. God's ready to send revival at any moment. We just need to do our part. He's always ready to do his part and so waiting on the Lord does not mean sit around and wait for something to happen. You still have to go out and do the works. Now just to prove that to you, you can stay there in Psalm 37 but there's a really famous verse in Isaiah that says, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall rise up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. So according to the Bible, the person who is waiting on the Lord is running. They're flying. They're walking. They're moving. They're doing something. So we can see from that famous scripture in Isaiah that waiting on the Lord is not inactivity. It's not idleness. What it is is just continuing to do what God has told us to do and waiting for his promises to come true. So we keep on flying. We keep on running. We keep on walking and we wait patiently for God to keep his end of the bargain. We wait patiently for God to send all these blessings that he's promised. That's what it means to wait on the Lord. It doesn't mean, well, you know, I'm not going to go to work. I'm just waiting on God to provide my needs or, you know, I'm a young man. I'm never going to talk to any young ladies because I'm just waiting on God to send me a wife. You know, I'm just waiting on God to send me opportunities to win souls. No, no. When you get out there and do the soul winning, you need to, you know, you need to make things happen in your life by working hard and then wait for God to fulfill his promises. Wait for God to send the blessings when he sees your obedience. So he says, you've got to what? Verse 3, trust in the Lord. Verse 4, delight yourself also in the Lord. Verse 5, commit thy way unto the Lord. And then in verse 6, he's going to do what? He's going to bring forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment as the noon day. But we've got to wait. It's not going to happen immediately. We need patience. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospers in his way because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Verse 8, cease from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off. Those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. See, there are a lot of wicked people that we can get really angry about and God doesn't want us to just live our lives just angry from day to day, just mad all the time. We need to just realize they're going to get what's coming to them. But we need to wait for it. We need to have patience and wait for the fact that God's going to punish the evildoers. God's going to bless those who are doing right. We need to wait for that. The Bible says in verse 10, for yet a little while and the wicked shall not be. Yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Go over if you were to Luke chapter 15 in the New Testament, Gospel of Luke chapter 15. While you're turning there, I'll read for you from Ecclesiastes chapter 7. The Bible reads in verse 8, better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. See, we as Christians, we need to have patience. We need to be willing to wait. The world and those who are sinful, they want instant gratification. They want to have it all. Right now, they don't want to wait for anything and that's part of what makes them wicked. And part of what makes someone righteous is the fact that they're willing to patiently wait on the Lord for his timing to give them the desires of their heart. You see, it's not that God doesn't want you to have enjoyment in your life or he doesn't want you to experience any pleasure or happiness or joy or fun. It's that we need to wait for his timing on things. You see, God wants you to have enjoyment, but you need to be patient and wait until it's righteous. For example, teenagers today, they need to wait until they're married and not commit fornication. You know, God wants you to be able to enjoy that activity within marriage and you need to patiently wait for the right time when you can enjoy that righteously. You know, there are times when we might need to wait to eat food or we might need to wait to drink some water or we might need to wait for something that we want to buy instead of just going out and putting it on the credit card or borrowing money or making foolish decisions or even stealing it, patiently waiting for those things that are good for us in life. You see, the wicked, they want to have everything right now. Look at Luke chapter 15. This is the example of the prodigal son. It says in verse 11, and he said, a certain man had two sons and the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the portion of goods that fall to me and he divided unto them as living and not many days after the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living. So here's a young person who says, I want to have all the pleasure now. I want to have all the fun now. I want to have all the enjoyment now. I'm not going to wait until I get older and legitimately get my inheritance. I want the portion of the goods that fall to me now. So his dad says, okay, fine. His dad gives him that amount of money and he gives him his inheritance right then and there and he takes it and in a very short time, he wastes it all with riotous living. Why? Because young people are often unwise and foolish about the way that they spend money and so he just goes out and parties. Who knows what he was doing? He's probably drinking. Maybe he was gambling. Maybe he's, you know, with a lot of loose women. That's what his brother later accuses him of, spending it on harlots. Who knows what he was doing with it, but he wasted it on sinful things because the Bible says riotous living. So whatever he was spending his money on, it was sinful. It was wicked and he's just blowing money. He wastes it all and it didn't last long. He wasted it all and then for the rest of his life, he's not going to have that now. You see, there are two philosophies in life. We can have the philosophy that says, enjoy now, suffer later or we can have a philosophy that says, suffer now, enjoy later. Okay? And this goes for every area of life. But here's the thing, when you suffer now and enjoy later, at least during the suffering, you have something to look forward to and that helps get through the suffering when you can look forward to something good on the other end of that. The Bible even talks about Jesus Christ when he suffered for us on the cross. It says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame. So when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he was enduring that and it says, he was doing it for the joy that was set before him. You know, the Bible talks about the fact that his flesh rested in hope and that he had joy because he knew that the father would not leave his soul in hell, neither would he suffer his holy one to see corruption. He knew that at his right hand, there would be pleasures forevermore. And so he endured the suffering, looking forward to the reward on the other end. But when you enjoy now and suffer later, there's nothing to look forward to during that suffering. It's just misery, it's just depressing and a lot of young people can literally just ruin their lives in a short amount of time. They can have pleasure and joy of sin for a season for just a short amount of time, maybe even just a couple of years. I mean, I don't think that it took this guy long to blow all his money in Luke 15, it's probably only a couple of years. And now for the rest of his life, he's got to suffer the consequences of having done that. You know, you spend that money on the credit card and you have so much fun on that partying weekend or whatever you do with it and then you end up paying for it, in some cases, literally for the rest of your life. I mean, some of these credit cards, you make the minimum payment and it never gets paid off. It keeps compounding and people just keep on paying for that meal and that meal that costs $40, they end up paying like $400 because they just keep paying interest on it year after year or whatever. You know, I know somebody, and I've told this story before, but who bought a pack of Band-Aids at Target and that pack of Band-Aids ended up costing them over $100 because they didn't pay the bill, they put it on a credit card, didn't pay the bill, all the fees, all the penalties ended up being like $120 or something for a pack of Band-Aids, right? So the point is that, you know, we don't want to get this philosophy of, give it to me all now. No, we need to learn as Christians to be patient people. We need to learn to wait for things. And by the way, your children, if they're hungry, they don't always have to eat this second. They have to wait a little bit to eat at a meal time, right? Kids they want to just snack and spoil their lunch, spoil their dinner, you know, they can wait till legitimate meal time sometimes, it actually builds some character, and just the moment that they feel the slightest little dryness in their mouth or throat, you know, we don't have to run and go get them water. I mean, look, we don't need to have hamster water feeders in our house so that our kids can just drip feed, drip drink water all day at all times. You know, it's just everybody just wants to gratify the flesh right now. You know, sometimes you skip a meal. Sometimes you wait for things. Sometimes you can't afford something. You got to save up for it, and you got to wait for it, and then you can look forward to it. And if you want to go on vacation, you got to tighten the belt now, and you got to sacrifice now and start putting money away for that so that you can enjoy that without just charging it all to a credit card and then suffer later. We'll figure out how to pay for this later. And you know, the whole financial illustration, that's not as big of a deal as a lot of things you could do in life to mess up your life. I mean, racking up the credit cards is a bad thing to do, but it's not the worst thing you could do. You know, you go out and commit fornication, there are going to be consequences for the rest of your life with that. You go out and commit adultery, there are consequences for that. You know, you go out and get drunk, who knows what you'll do while you're drunk. Who knows, you know, oh, you know, we're going to have fun. No, you need to patiently wait for the right kind of fun and the right kind of enjoyment in God's timing and not take the shortcut to having a good time, the pleasures of sin for a season. Flip over if you would to Luke chapter 8, right there, you're in Luke 15, just go back a few pages to Luke chapter 8. You got to be patient in life. Sometimes you have to spend a lot of time studying or spend a lot of time getting trained so that later you can work that job where you can make good money and be successful and do what you need to do and not just do what's best for you right now. Just live for today, right? Just carpe diem or whatever. No, you need to be patient and work toward future happiness, work toward future goals, work toward blessings that God's going to bless you with in the future. You see, today you have a choice and every day you have a choice. You know, you could go out and serve God today and if you serve God today it's going to be work. Let's say you show up for soul winning this afternoon. I mean, that's hard work, it's hot outside, you're out preaching the gospel, it's tiring, it's hard work, it's exhausting but the rewards are there in the future way off in the distance and God's going to bless you even in this life but it's not going to happen immediately. You got to patiently wait for it. You got to wait on the Lord or you can just say, no, no, no, I just want to just have all the enjoyment. Now, you could find a lot more enjoyable things to be doing today than going soul winning. You could find a lot more enjoyable things to be doing today than being in this service or being in the evening service. Or why come on Wednesday night? I mean, if you're just looking for maximum fun, maximum thrill, maximum endorphins, there are going to be other things that you can do that are going to be more fun and more exciting. But you know what? In the long run you're going to have a lot more happiness, a lot more joy, a lot more pleasure in your life if you come to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, no soul winning, serve the Lord, read your Bible. Look, it's a lot more fun in the short term to just turn on the TV, turn on a movie, right? Or just read some light vein reading. But picking up the Bible and reading it gives joy in the long run. It gives joy and reward in the long run. You must have patience. You say, well, I don't like this sermon because I want to just enjoy everything right now. Then you're a fool and you're going to ruin your life. If that's your attitude of just give it to me all right now, then you're going to be like the prodigal son, you're going to waste everything, you're going to waste all your goods, you're going to ruin your life, and you're going to ruin the lives of those around you. Patience is essential to the Christian life. You cannot be a godly Christian. You cannot be a righteous person. You cannot be a decent human being without patience. You must have patience. You must be willing to wait for the reward later. Work today so that you can get paid next Friday. But it's a lot easier just to call in sick today and go to the lake and go to the river and whatever. You know, hey, you be austere today, right? You be austere with your meals today. You eat the rice and beans today so that later you can save up and enjoy the steak and lobster or whatever it is that you want. You don't just go out and just do it all right now, just give it to me all right now. In the long run, there's suffering there. So you've got to have patience. Luke chapter 8 verse 15 says, but that on the good ground are they which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience. The godly soul winner who brings forth fruit, his life is characterized by patience. Go if you would to Hebrews chapter number 6, Hebrews chapter number 6. While you're turning there, the Bible says in Romans 8 24, for we're saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man seeth, why did he yet hope for it? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. We wait for the things that God has promised us without seeing them. Look at Hebrews chapter 6 verse 10. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which you have showed toward his name and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end. That you be not slothful, that means lazy, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, saying surely blessing I will bless thee and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. So Abraham had to patiently endure to obtain the promise. Now he wasn't slothful, he's not sitting around waiting on God doing no work. No he was working hard, he was serving the Lord, and he had to patiently endure. God promised Abraham that he would have a son and that God would make him a great nation out of his own loins. He had to wait a really long time to see that happen, just decades and decades of waiting and waiting. He didn't say that's it, I'm going after other gods because the Lord's not answering my prayer fast enough. No, he patiently endured and eventually he obtained the promise. Then his son Isaac, Isaac got married when he was 40 years old and his wife couldn't have children. His wife Rebecca was barren. He prayed to the Lord for 20 years. And you know you read over that in one verse but that's a long time. For 20 years he prays to the Lord, finally when he's 60 years old his wife gets pregnant and only one pregnancy in her life and had those twins Jacob and Esau. But he had to wait a really long time, he had to patiently endure, patiently wait for it. Say why were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob such great men of God? They were men who had patience and they were willing to wait on God and wait for the promises of God to show up. And so that's an example from Abraham, from Isaac, Jacob obviously was willing to wait. He worked for seven years in order to get his wife that he wanted so he had to wait for that. He had to work hard for seven years and earn the right to marry the woman that he wanted to marry. And then Joseph is a great example of having to wait on the Lord. Joseph when he was a young person was persecuted of his brethren. His brethren hated him, they treated him badly and when he was 17 years old his brothers ended up beating him up, throwing him in a pit. Some of them wanted to kill him, someone wanted to just leave him in the pit and then finally one of them came up with the idea, Judah, he said hey let's sell him, let's make money off of him. So they ended up selling him into slavery to the Egyptians. Even though there's a traveling caravan going by, they take their brother out of the pit, they sell him to the Ishmaelites. He sells him down into slavery and to Egypt when he's 17 years old. And then they take his coat, they rip it up, put blood on it and say oh hey we found this, we don't know what happened to Joseph. So his dad assumed he was dead. So Joseph gets down to Egypt and when he's down there he's a slave, he's a servant in Potiphar's house. And all along the way in that story the Bible keeps saying the Lord was with Joseph, the The Lord was with Joseph, but it didn't really seem like it at the time because he's getting beat up, thrown in a pit, sold into slavery in a foreign country. But as he's in that foreign country he begins to prosper and things seem like they're going pretty good because Joseph was a good servant to Potiphar and Potiphar ended up liking his work ethic so much they ended up just putting him in charge of everything in his whole house and he treated him very well. So just when things are looking up for Joseph then all of a sudden Potiphar's wife sets her eyes on Joseph and begins to lust after him and she wants to lie with him carnally and he of course being a godly young man refuses her and over and over again she keeps trying to seduce him and trying to entice him. Finally she catches him in the house all alone, it's just him and her. She grabs his clothes and says lay with me, you know, and he ends up running away. She takes some of his clothing right off his body as he runs away and then she uses that as evidence to prove, hey, he came in and tried to force me. She basically turns the opposite story that instead of her trying to seduce him she lies and says it was him trying to lay hold on her and so he ends up going to prison now and then he spends a bunch of time in prison which is obviously not where anybody wants to be and while he's in prison he ends up interpreting the dream of the baker and the butler of Pharaoh and one of them is going to be restored, one of them is going to be killed. He interprets that dream and he tells the guy who's going to be restored, he says listen, you got to remember me, put in a good word for me to Pharaoh. I was falsely accused, I shouldn't be in prison, get me out of here, say something, help me out. Okay, yeah, I'll help you out. The guy totally forgets all about it. So two years go by, two years and you know, again, we just read that in one verse, two years is a long time. You know, 730 days of waking up in prison, going to bed in prison, just a week, over a hundred weeks of just being in prison, being in prison, just thinking I'm going to be in prison for the rest of my life because it'd be one thing if you knew you were in prison for two years but he's just in prison, he doesn't know when he's getting out. We don't know how long, he doesn't know how long he's going to be in there. And then finally, Pharaoh has a dream and then the chief butler ends up saying, oh, I do remember my faults this day, yeah, there was this guy. And then he tells Pharaoh about Joseph, Joseph gets out. And then at 30 years of age, Joseph ends up being the ruler of the most powerful nation in the world. I mean, that's a pretty amazing position to be in. Now, if you're running the most powerful nation in the world by the time you're 30, I mean, you have arrived, you are successful, that's pretty amazing. And you'd say, well, that guy didn't have to wait long, yeah, except for 13 years though, think about it. From the time he was 17 to the time he was 30, he was either a servant in Potiphar's house or he was in prison. We don't know how long he was in prison. He was in prison for more than two years. It was just two years after he interpreted the dream. He's already running the whole prison by the time he interprets that dream because he worked so hard. So we don't know, but he had to have been in there for long enough to attain that status. So he had to be in prison for at least three or four years. He might have been in prison for 10 years for all we know. We don't know how long he was in prison, but he was in prison for a long time, 13 years of servitude and prison waiting, waiting, waiting on God to bless him. And throughout all that time, he retained his integrity. He kept worshipping the Lord. He kept praying the Lord, praying to the Lord. He did not commit adultery. He didn't commit these sins. He patiently waited and then God exalted him in due time. And he got to be in that great position where he's ruling over the most powerful nation at that time. It was even said in the Bible that he was a father to Pharaoh. Now Pharaoh is the king of Egypt and Joseph said, God has made me a father unto him. So you know, Pharaoh might've been a younger guy in that sense, but either way, that's a pretty exalted position when you're running the whole nation. And then he ended up having his own wife and having his own children, Ephraim and Manasseh. And so Joseph ended up being able to enjoy a physical relationship with a woman legitimately as his wife, but he could have just said, well, I want it right now. And Potiphar's wife's interested. Let's do it. He would have ruined his life. He would have ruined a lot of other people's lives. He was patient. He waited. And look, the whole Bible is just filled with stories like that of people receiving promises from God and then waiting. I mean, Joseph had received these dreams that he's going to be ruling and reigning and things are going to go great that were revealed to him by God. He's probably wondering what's going on with that when he's a slave and when he's in prison, but it all ended up happening. And God has made us a lot of promises in the Bible, and sometimes it's easy for us to think, well, it's just never going to happen. God's never going to bless me. God's never going to come through for me. I might as well just enjoy life because I know that if I go to the world, I can have some fun right now. I can get some enjoyment right now, just a quick fix, just go straight to the bar, straight to the casino, straight to the nightclub, straight to whatever, and just be gratified right now. You've got to patiently wait, wait, keep serving God, go to church, go soul winning, read your Bible, and look, you might be in a hard point in life right now. You might be suffering right now and struggling and sad and lonely and God doesn't seem to be coming through for you or doing what you need him to do, but you've got to patiently wait because God demands of his children patience, patience. We need to make sure that we are patient people and that we raise our children to be patient. Don't just give your children everything they want right now. You're going to raise them to be horrible people. If you just teach them, you never have to wait for anything. Whatever you want will buy it for you. Whenever you're hungry, you eat that second and you eat exactly what you want, when you want, and you just indulge the flesh at all times with candy and ice cream and just no waiting, just snacking and junk and whatever. You want to get a toy, you want to buy, just everything is immediately ordered on Amazon now, right, where it comes in two hours, it's delivered to your house in two hours. You know, when I was a kid, in my day, we had to wait four to six weeks for delivery and that was just when they thought about starting to send it to you. We'd buy a box of Legos and we'd get that little Lego catalog and look through that Lego catalog. We'd write down all the part numbers that we wanted. We sent in a money order and we waited six to eight weeks for delivery and I'm a young man but that's how it was in my day when I was a kid. Nowadays you push a button and it's at your house two hours later because your parents are going to pay, yeah, it's delivered by a drone, you know, you push a button and your parents pay the extra five bucks or six bucks because they want their little brat to have it right now. No, you need to wait, wait, and look, children will take advantage if you don't make them wait for things. Oh, I'm so hungry, I'm starving. You're not really starving. Oh, I'm so thirsty. You know, look, you can wait a little bit. It builds character. We don't just have to just jump every time. You know, you just had a pint of water 20 minutes ago but, oh, I'm thirsty. Kids will just use this as a way to just constantly get up in church and move around, get up from their schoolwork and move around, get up from chores. You know, it's like you send them to do a chore and just five seconds, oh, I got to use the bathroom, oh, I got to get a drink, oh, I got to eat something. Just no waiting, no patience. We need to make sure that our kids learn that you don't always gratify every physical need right now because what kind of a message are you sending them if that's what you teach them? You never go through any suffering, you never go through any pain or discomfort, that's not the way life works, especially not for righteous and godly people whose life biblically must be characterized by patience. Go to James chapter 5, patience, waiting on the Lord, waiting for things, waiting for things. You know, when it comes to eating and drinking, you know, there's an epidemic today in America and people don't like it when we talk about this but gluttony is epidemic today in America. And I understand because I, you know, I'm a bit of a glutton at times, we all are, right? I mean, we're all human, we're all sinners and we all indulge in too much of things and indulge in junk food at times that we shouldn't and go overboard but, you know, what I find is that, you know, if I know that later on that day, I'm just going to give you some practical advice, if I know that later on that day I'm going to indulge in some, you know, bacon cheeseburger, fries, whatever, you know, just some kind of a major caloric intake later on in the day, then you know what I'll do sometimes is I'll have a really austere day leading up to that, you know, that means I might skip breakfast and obviously children should not skip breakfast, children should eat breakfast but adults can skip breakfast. You don't have to eat breakfast. And I'll skip breakfast, have an austere lunch, maybe even exercise a little bit, right? Then by the time I get to dinner, I can fully indulge and enjoy and I don't have to think to myself, wow, you know, I'm overdoing it or whatever because I know I've earned it because I was austere with my diet all the way up to this point. Now I can indulge guilt-free, right? Or you know, and look, that way you're following the philosophy of suffering first and enjoying later. Now if you were to try to do the opposite, think about if you just woke up in the morning and just ate some gigantor breakfast, just French toast with maple syrup, bacon, butter, you know, and you just, big glasses of milk which is, I love milk. But as I get older, I have to be more austere with my milk consumption because otherwise I tend to gain weight if I just drink as much. If I could just do whatever I wanted with no regard to health or calories or anything, I would drink every day with every meal two pints of milk. I would drink two pints for breakfast, two pints for lunch and two pints for dinner. That's what I would do. I mean if I just did what I wanted, now that would be expensive, right? Because we drink raw milk, it's like eight or ten dollars a gallon. So that would be super expensive and it would also be super caloric and you know, as you get older it's a lot of calories, you know, all that milk, just liquid calories, right? But that's what I would do. I mean just in my flesh, that's my greatest lust is just two glasses of milk with every meal. No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, the point is though, that you know, if you just woke up in the morning and just ate some breakfast like a king, right? You're just drinking the milk and the syrup and the just sausages and biscuits and gravy and just go nuts. And then try to be austere the whole rest of the day with nothing to look forward to. Now maybe that works for you. That wouldn't work for me because that would just get my furnace burning and you know, when lunch rolls around I'm going to want to go big again for lunch, go big again for dinner, right? So it makes more sense to start out the day more austere and then build up to that climax for dinner, right? See, that's the way life is though. You know, it's good for a young man, the Bible says, to bear the yoke in his youth. When you're young, when you're a teenager, when you're in your 20s, don't have this attitude that says, oh, I'm in my prime of life, I'm just going to go out and party and have fun and enjoy. No, because then you're going to spend the rest of your life suffering for it. What you ought to do as a teenager, what you ought to do in your 20s, what you ought to do in your 30s is put your nose to the grindstone, work hard, be austere, get things done and prepare for the future. And I'm not talking about laying up treasures on this earth. I'm talking about laying up treasures in heaven. I'm talking about preparing for the future spiritually. I'm talking about preparing for the future mentally. Prepare for the future by building the right kind of habits in your life. If you go out and party and have fun and just eat, drink, and be merry for your teens and 20s, you know what, the rest of your life is just all downhill from there. Then that's your funnest time. Your funnest time was in your teens and 20s. Look, I'm having more fun now than I had in my teens and 20s. I'm enjoying it more today. Why? Because that's how you got to live your life. You got to start out being austere. You know, when other people are out drinking and partying and being an idiot, you're reading your Bible, praying, and going to church, and guess what, you're going to be way happier than they are. You're going to have way more joy, way more pleasure, and you're going to enjoy rewards for eternity. Or you can be like the stupid prodigal son and just blow it all, blow the whole lot. It wasn't even that fun. And then the whole rest of your life is downhill from there. You ever see these old people that are really burned out and you can tell that they just really partied in their youth? It's sad. It's sad to see a person like that who just partied, and you can tell that that's the only thing that they sought in life was pleasure and that now they're just bitter and angry because there's no pleasure left because they're old. But see, when you live a godly life, when you're old, you can enjoy being old because you've actually built up spiritual rewards and you've actually got good habits where you can look at your children and your grandchildren and enjoy godly things in life. Do you think that an old person is going to have an easier time enjoying the things of God or enjoying the party life? I mean, when you're 75 years old, you think you're going to be better at partying or better at serving the Lord? See, serving the Lord is something that old people can do. Serving the Lord is something you can do your whole life all the way to the end. Partying is something that just is going to go downhill. Look, if your whole life is just only about sports, guess what? Your best times are going to be in your 20s and 30s and your whole life is going to be downhill from there. But you know, when you're serving the Lord, you can actually do your greatest works for God in your 60s. You could actually do the greatest work for God in the 70s. You can. Look at all the examples in the Bible. You know, the Caleb's and the Joshua's and the Moses's and the Aaron's that did their greatest works for God when they got older. I guarantee you that the apostles were doing a lot of their greatest works toward the end. Look at James chapter 5 verse 7. It says, be patient therefore. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he received the early and the latter rain. So again, this proves that waiting on the Lord and being patient isn't idleness. Because the husbandman, he's working hard, he's planting the seeds, he's weeding it, he's watering it, he's working hard as a farmer, but he's patient because he doesn't get the reward for many, many months. See the foolish son is the one who sleeps in harvest, he sits around, he doesn't plow his field because it's too cold outside. He'd rather just snuggle up by the fire with a book or something while he should be out there plowing his field in the spring. And then in the harvest he begs because he has nothing, right? So farming takes patience because you work really hard and you don't get the payoff until months later. It says in verse 8, be ye also patient, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned. Behold the judge standeth before the door. Take my brethren the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering affliction and of patience. Watch this. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. So let me just close by saying this. If you want real happiness in your life, if you really want to have joy in the Christian life, you must have patience. And today the world that we live in, especially in 2017 America, that just says give it to me right now, I don't ever want to wait for anything, I want to enjoy it and indulge it all right now, has it made them happy? No, you'll find unhappiness today amongst people that live that life. See we count them happy which endure. People who live their life with the philosophy of suffering now and enjoying later are the happy people. They're happy even while they suffer. Why? Because they're looking forward to the rewards. And then when they get the rewards, they can enjoy them happily and guilt-free because they know I've earned it, I've suffered, I've paid the price to get where I am, and now I can rightfully, righteously enjoy the legitimate reward and fruit of my life. They can go out and buy that item that they wanted because they know that they've already earned it, they've already paid for it, they've waited for it, they've been patient for it. As opposed to the people who just go out, get it right now, then they have the guilt and they're wondering, you know, well what's the future going to hold, and then it's all downhill from there. I don't want to live my life like this. That's depressing. At every point on that curve it's depressing, at any point. But see, if you live your life like this, then at every single point there's joy there. And so we need to be patient. God wants us to be patient. God demands that we be patient. And a lot of times he makes us wait for things to teach us patience, just like sometimes we make our children wait for things in order to teach them patience. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for all the promises that you've made, Lord, all the rewards that are in store, all the blessings even in this life that you give us, Lord. Help us all to realize that we must patiently endure. We can't just expect to have everything right now. We've got to go through suffering and want so that we can enjoy more down the road, Lord. Help us all to be patient Christians. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.